Let Summer Begin...

I have found over the years that to make my life go more smoother, and to help pretty much everyone in our house not to throw the occupational tantrum, I have to keep us all on our schedule even through summer. So the girls have their work charts that they HAVE to complete before they are allowed to do ANYTHING else. And if you look at it close you see that take a bath and brush your teeth are first on the list....yes I have to remind them to do these things still! Then next is what they have to keep clean...bedroom, bathroom, playroom, and laundry room. After cleaning they do two pages in their summer workbooks. It covers math, science, writing, spelling, etc. To help keep them in the learning mood. Then they have the list of 20 min jobs which include, typing practice (they have a typing program that teaches them the keys), Elizabeth has one extra job which is 20 min of Viola practice, then read for 20 min ( I got them all new summer books to read), and last practice piano for 20 min! Now this may seem like a lot of stuff but my kids get up REALLY early in the morning and if they are focused they can finish the whole list by 9AM! Now if they finish their chores for the day and want to earn money I have put up a jobs list in the Canning Kitchen that they can choose from for extra money. I laminated these jobs and put velcro on the back so that they can take off the jobs that they complete! Before they get any money they have to be approved by me or Nana that they were done right. So far I think Elizabeth has earned almost $10...Abby maybe $5.

Every Summer I give the girls the option to pick one extra activity that they want to do...i.e. sport, extra lessons, etc. This year I made them a deal...they could choose the extra activity or they could choose to do more big stuff...i.e. seven peaks parks, museums, zoo, etc. They picked the big stuff. They each made a list of activities that they wanted to see or wanted to go to and we made our master list. To earn a trip to one of the places on our big list they have to fully complete chores. So far the girls have done a really good job and we have already done a few big things sprinkled with a few smaller activities. I think so far the summer is going pretty good!